Archive for November, 2005
Yahoo mail gets RSS.
If you already use Yahoo Mail, you’re going to be seriously stoked about this one. If you don’t use it, this could almost be a good enough reason to switch. I’m still a big gmail fan, but this has me drooling
Yahoo announced today that they’ve built an RSS aggregator in to Yahoo Mail. Since it’s only available to people in the Beta, I couldn’t try it out but it looks pretty darn sweet. Yes, you can read your RSS feeds in the same place you read your email. Yes, it’s a full fledged aggregator, so you can just click on a feed and read whatever new content is there. It looks incredibly easy to forward articles on (and obviously you can use your address book and groups to do so), and you can also drag and drop blog posts into your regular mail folders. I dig that feature big time.
I still feel like one of the biggest problems with blogs is that you still need to be mildly geeky to understand RSS and what you do with those cryptic pages of XML code in order to subscribe to a feed. I don’t personally use My Yahoo, but I do love the fact that they created a one-click method to subscribe to blogs and add them to a user’s My Yahoo page. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with something similar to subscribe to blogs in yahoo mail as well (hopefully using the same mechanism so people don’t have to change their buttons).
I wish the screenshots were a bit better. Anyone have access to the Beta and want to get some better shots?
A swing and a miss. PSP to support RSS. Sort of.
The only reason I’m bringing this up is because A) I own a PSP and B) Many of your students own one or a similar device (such as a palm, ipod, cell phone,etc.)
Sony updated the PSP firmware and they have now built in RSS support! Sounds fantastic, eh? Unfortunately, not really. They came so close too. First of all, the RSS seems to really revolve around audio files. You can’t just cache your blogs to take them on the go. However, as a podcaster that in itself still sounded pretty darn good! Here’s the kicker though: it will only stream the audio.
So, it can check a feed, load it up, and list all the audio files enclosed. But if you want to listen to any of those files, you have to have an active wireless connection. Wow, talk about missing the point, eh?
Anyway, it’s still exciting in a teeny tiny way because it does emphasize one more way that RSS is starting to permeate the world of things that get plugged in or have batteries. Step in the right direction, albeit a baby step.
What I do when I’m not blogging, the Discovery Educator Network
At this point I’ve had to explain to explain so many times what I do during the day that it almost seems redundant to blog about it. It is pretty exciting stuff though, so I figure I should share anyway. Oh, and for the record, this is my general understanding of how things came to be and what my position entails. If I’ve made any mistakes, I’m sure I will be ridiculed mercilessly in our next conference call.
As I’ve said before, I do work for Discovery now. Yes, Discovery as in the Discovery Channel. They have a division called Discovery Education that’s been around for about a year and makes all kinds of cool things for schools, including a huge number of educational DVD’s, laserdiscs and VHS tapes. Discovery also bought unitedstreaming, which if you haven’t heard about yet you really should check into. It’s a massive video library, all online, that can be streamed, downloaded, and many of them can even be edited for use in movies and digital stories. I’m not going to waste time telling you much about that product, but let’s just say that it’s cool enough that New York, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Iowa, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Rhode Island bought state wide licenses for their teachers (so if you’re in those states, you already own it).
Obviously Discovery Education has a vested interested in the educational community and they’ve really tried to take the initiative when it comes to helping teachers get digital media in their classrooms. However, this isn’t really a company that sits back on its laurels and pats itself on the back over a job well done. They like to stay on the cutting edge and tried to figure out what the next step would be.
Since Discovery already has their hands in the digital media pie, it just makes sense to keep moving forward along those lines. As more and more schools have a computer connected to the internet in every classroom, the barriers to teachers using digital media quickly and easily are eroding. From using multimedia to increase understanding and retention to digital storytelling, teachers are jumping at the chance to take advantage of this stuff. Clearly a big deal in the education world right now.
Enter, the Discovery Educator Network. The official description is “The Discovery Educator Network is a global community of educators who are excited by the power of digital media and want to collaborate and share resources with other teachers.” But what does it really mean? We want to provide support to teachers who are using digital media and hook them up with other educators who have a common interest. We want to provide a place for experts to work with each other to blaze a new trail forward. We also want to create a support forum for people who are just getting started. Teachers connecting with teachers. Novel idea, eh?
Anyway, there are two pieces to this. One is creating a network of expert teachers, ‘certified’ teachers who are leading the way when it comes to digital media in the educational environment. We want to recognize their efforts and provide them with opportunities to share their knowledge with other people. It’s not all about us, it’s about finding those heroes of the classroom and giving them a soapbox to hop up on and share their knowledge. That part is going on right now. People can head over to the web site and apply to join the network. Heck, if you use digital media in just about any way at all, I strongly suggest that you throw in an application. You’d be in pretty darn good company.
The second piece is the web site that we’re in the process of building right now. It’s being designed to facilitate conversation, support, and collaboration around the subject of digital media. Sort of a home away from home for 21st century teachers. There’s going to be a message board, a multimedia resource database, a blog engine, and potential for a heck of alot more. It’s just a beginning, a launching point of sorts. We haven’t even launched the new site, but we’re already planning for how we can improve it.
In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, that’s where I come in. The official title is “Online Community Manager” and it really encompasses just about all things online related to the Discovery Educator Network. Right now we have a small, but growing network of blogs. Every regional manager that’s hired gets a blog where they can keep people in their state posted about local events, contests, conferences and other tidbits that might interest them. Most of them have never blogged before so they’re busy getting the hang of it and finding their own voices. One thing that definitely comes through as you read through what they have though is that there’s a buzz, a sense of excitement, a clear feeling that something big is in the works. Obviously, another part of my job is going to be supporting our growing blogging community.
So where’s the catch? There really isn’t much of one. Pure and simple, we’ve got one of the best products out there for digital media, unitedstreaming. Bazillions of districts already have bought a subscription, but many of the teachers in those districts don’t even know it! So this will hopefully help prod a few people into trying something new, particularly if their district has already bought into it. If their district hasn’t, maybe this will provide a little impetus to help sell a few more licenses. Regardless though, we figure that if we’re doing something to genuinely help move the world of education forward, nothing but good things can come of it.
The other question I’ve been asked a million times is where the line is being drawn between Teach42 and the Discovery Educator Network. That’s a tough one and I’m still figuring that out. The current plan is to just keep on keeping on. Teach42 will continue on as it has, but I’ll also be blogging on behalf of Discovery Education at the national blog. We’ll see how it goes, but don’t worry about this site selling out. If I can’t be honest and straightforward here, I’d rather hang up the spurs and move on. That much I can promise you.
The thing is, I’m excited about it. I wouldn’t have taken the job if I thought I was going to be turned into a sales agent. Discovery Education is doing some really cool stuff and I’m having a blast just being a part of it. If I share it with you here, it’s because I think it’s something you folks will get a kick out of too. And trust me when I say, there’s plenty of that sort of stuff in the works!
Oh yeah, one other thing, we’re still looking for quite a few Field Managers. So if you do happen to be looking for a new line of work, check out the careers page for more information. Trust me, it’s a heck of a place to work!
Thought cycle of a new idea
I was reading Dean’s post about discussing why educators should try to comment more on other people’s blogs and followed a link to a student of his. I love the name of the blog (This is Not a Rant), but besides that I found a post that really reinforces what he was talking about.
As usual, my thought cycle regarding the usage of ANY new idea, program, thing, followed the same course:
Love it.
Hate it.
Think of a million excuses of why it won’t work in general.
Admit that while it may work for others, think of a million specific examples of why it won’t for me because, dammit, I am an individual and no one else is like me.
Realize that my excuses are just that, excuses.
And then I either:
Try the new thing (be it technology, teaching strategy, hair shampoo).
Or
Let myself procrastinate on the implementation long enough that I can forget about it.I heard myself put up barriers as to why blogging, while advantageous for ‘other educators’, just would not work for me — I mean, we have a very restricted network at our school, I have no time, no one would want to read what I wish to share, too many people will want to read what I wish to share…the list goes on and on. Excuses, excuses, excuses.
It ain’t easy starting up a new blog. At first, you’re talking and nobody seems to be listening at all. I wonder if it would be possible to set up some sort of support group for new bloggers. Or to organize new bloggers into small groups that can keep an eye on each other and give each other feedback. It’s a big ol’ blogosphere and those first few bits of feedback (comments/trackbacks) are often the difference between someone sticking with it and just sticking it in a corner.
How can established bloggers support to budding bloggers in a manageable way? Thoughts?
Exercise your right to vote at the Edublog Awards
The Edublog Awards 2005 have been announced. I think the hard part is going to be narrowing down my nominations to two per catgory. There’s so many good blogs out there that should be recognized.
The best part about the awards are that they let you know about the blogs you should be checking out but didn’t know about yet. It’s a great ‘hit list’ for peopel who are new to the edublogosphere.
Help too much or too little
Hrrrm… Interesting post by the Bionic Teacher: The Line Between Helping and Helping Too Much. Something that I’ve struggled with quite a bit, and am struggling with right now actually. Where’s the line between spoon feeding and making something painless?
I don’t believe everyone needs to be a geek. Most people can get through life quite happily without ever seeing the source code of a web page or typing into a terminal window. However, in my efforts to make things as easy as possible, I do wonder how often I’m hindering people’s own discovery process.
The BionicTeacher writes:
If we want teachers using computers we’ve got to get rid of the annoyances (well at least most of the major ones anyway). Anything that means teachers won’t have to spend time on non-educational computer uses should be done. Educational computer integration will really start taking off when it’s made as easy as blogging- and then we can work on getting more teachers blogging.
I think this begs the question, just how easy is blogging? Yes, it’s as easy as typing something in and clicking submit, but that’s only a small part of the process. That’s like saying driving is just as easy as turning the key and starting the engine. Or painting is as easy as grabbing a marker and drawing. While it may be technically true, there’s quite a bit more that figures into it. Aggregators, comments, formatting, spam, feeds, sidebars, blogrolls, and all sorts of other things figure into the equation too.
The reason I bring this up is because I’ve just recently become the Blogfather to a bunch of hard working dedicated bloggers, most of which had no idea what a blog was a few months ago. Many of them still don’t, but they do know how to post. Is blogging no more than typing into a text box and clicking submit? Personally, I think there’s more to it than that.
So the question becomes, how much handholding to people (particularly teachers) need? Where is that fine line between hand holding and spoon feeding drawn?
Personally, I do believe in making sure that the technology doesn’t get in the way. For example, if you want to teach people how to create newsletters, then make sure they don’t have to learn about mounting a server share point to do it. However, if you want somebody to establish a blog for the purpose of promoting conversations about classroom discussions outside of the school setting, then I do think people need to know more than just how to type and click submit.
Trust me, I do believe in keeping things as simple as possible. But if you’re teaching someone something new, then you don’t necessarily want it to be as simple as possible. As they say, make something foolproof and the only people who will use it will be fools. I think we have higher expectations for both our teachers and students. Most of the time, we don’t want them to just be able to produce something. We want them to understand it. Simplifying things helps people do things, but it doesn’t help them understand it.
There you go. In a nutshell: Help too much when you need someone to just do something. Back off when you want them to understand it.
Can someone turn that into something quotable for me?
Blawgthink and Open Space
Last week I presented a little session about podcasting at Blawgthink, a conference for legal bloggers. The first day of the conference was fairly traditional, with various strands and presentations for all varieties of skill levels. The second day was entirely in the Open Space format. There were no scheduled sessions, the agenda was created by the people for the people. In this podcast, I have a clip from Michael Herman, an expert who facilitates Open Space workshops around the world. Oh yeah, I also share the trials and tribulations associated with my first business trip. Enjoy the show!
Show notes:
Blawgthink 2005: A conference for legal bloggers created by Matt Homann
Open Space: A chaotic, but productive way to facilitate a conference. I dig it.
Michael Herman: An expert is Open Space meetings and kind enough to allow me to broadcast his introduction.
Videoblogging – Think of it as an alpha.
Ok, I really shouldn’t get into this one because I know I’m going to wind up on a soap box, but Dean’s post about videoblogging has forced me to comment. He’s actually responding to a post of Alan’s, so you can get all the background you might need!
My two cents on video blogging: It’s cool as all heck, but it ain’t in the form it needs to be yet.
Let me step back to podcasting. We’ve had internet radio for a while. The trouble with it was that nobody wanted to sit at their computer and listen to radio all day. They wanted to hear it in their car or jogging. Same thing with audioblogs. Great idea, but no easy way to take it with you. However, now that everyone has MP3 players and podcatchers have made it easy to subscribe to podcasts, they’ve taken off in popularity. Whether it has staying power is still up in the air, but nobody can deny that there isn’t a ton of potential there. The key is, the right format met up with the right software and the right hardware.
With video blogging, we’re getting the right format, we’re getting the right hardware. But I do not believe the software is there yet. Before you get the wrong idea, let me clarify the hardware comment though. I’m NOT talking about the video iPod or personal media player. Dean is right, “Podcasting is naturally mobile. That is its main advantage. It also allows for multi-tasking.” Videlocasting is NOT naturally mobile. Most of the time, people watch video at home. On the sofa. In front of the TV. And that’s where videocasting has to go.
The right hardware is the DVR, aka Tivo. The right place is the family room. The right software is a versoin of Tivo that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds that contain video’s in them. The Tivo needs to become a Vid-Catcher. I want to see Dave Warlick’s videocasts right next to my episodes of Seinfeld. I want to see the room 202 Videocast listed right next to Sportscenter or Emeril. If I have 10 minutes free, I can see what those crazy kids are up to. I want my children’s ‘newsletter’ to be a news cast that is created quickly, easily and weekly. I want to SEE the drama activity that they did instead of reading about it or hearing them describing it.
See where I’m going with this? So before you denounce videocasting, think of it as an alpha. Version 0.15a. And consider where it might be able to go. We certainly aren’t there yet, but we’re getting there.
Tag the good stuff. Duh.
Re: Are you burying your content?
Ever feel really dumb when you have the tools to make what seems like a complicated task incredibly simple but you don’t even realize it? I was just commenting on how one problem with a blog is that your good content eventually drifts off into the ether. It’s still searchable, but it’s not readily available to someone new to blogging. I love Pederson’s idea of just created a del.icio.us tag.
I quietly added a “mustread” block to the sidebar of my website. See site. It’s actually a del.icio.us feed, allowing you to view it on the site and/or subscribe to it in your aggregator. I wanted a way of keeping what I think is the “best of edublogging” on top. I prefer pointing at others.
I’d suggest doing it for your own content as well, so people can find the really good stuff quickly and easily. Would definitely help make you a little more ‘accessible’ to newcomers. Simple idea. Gotta add this to the todo list!
Tags related to Education: Politices, News and Warlick
I just had to share this one. I was doing some searching around Technorati today (it was work related, I swear), and decided to browse through a few Tag searches. Of course, the first search I did was for the word “Education“.
When you do a Technorati Tag search, it gives you a list of related tags. So I bet you’re wondering what tags are related to education. Let’s see… There’s Politics, Technology and News. Hmmm… What else? Science, Religion, culture and…. Warlick???
Yes that’s right, our good friend Dave Warlick has been promoted to Tag status! Heh, not that he doesn’t deserve it, but I just find it funny that he’s right up there with Politics, News and Science.
In all seriousness though, it really does speak volumes to the importance of appropriate tagging and the effectiveness of doing so. Mental note: Go figure out how to fix my broken Technorati plug in for WordPress.
